


The Life You Save May Be Your Own

by windsorblue



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-05-19
Updated: 2003-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windsorblue/pseuds/windsorblue





	The Life You Save May Be Your Own

_~~"Lady," he said, and turned and gave her his full attention, "lemme tell you something. There's one of these doctors in Atlanta that's taken a knife and cut out the human heart - the human heart," he repeated, leaning forward, "out of a man's chest and held it in his hand," and he held his hand out, palm up, as if it were slightly weighted with the human heart, "and studied it like it was a day-old chicken, and lady," he said, allowing a long significant pause in which his head slid forward and his clay-colored eyes brightened, "he don't know no more about it than you or me."_

_"That's right," the old woman said._

_\--From "The Life You Save May be Your Own", by Flannery O'Connor~~_

\--

Don't ask me why I even followed her in the first place, because I'll be damned if I know.

I had snuck out of the office a couple of hours after lunch. I know, I know - I have the reputation of being all work and no play, but according to Duo even I have my quirks, and one of them is my sweet tooth. There's this bakery a couple of blocks down that sells raspberry cheesecake on Wednesdays, so usually around two in the afternoon, I find some excuse to leave the building and get my fix. Please, don't mock me about it - I get enough of that from Duo and Wufei.

Last Wednesday I was leaving the bakery and heading straight back to work when I literally ran into her on the sidewalk. She took a step back, but to her credit she didn't fall, and it wasn't until I grabbed her arm to steady her that I realized who she was.

"Dorothy," I said, and I'm sure I sounded surprised, even though I was trying not to.

"Oh, Heero," she replied, shaking her head sharply. "I must not have been watching where I was going. Excuse me." And with that, she walked off, leaving me to stand alone on the sidewalk, completely bewildered.

I remember thinking, did she just say 'excuse me'? Wasn't there supposed to be a snide comment about how someone so graceful in a mobile suit couldn't manage to walk down the street without leaving havoc in his wake? Shouldn't there have been some nebulous, incomprehensible innuendo about my just looking for an excuse to rub up against her? Weren't we supposed to be politely snapping at each other's throats by now?

Yes, we were. I knew we were, and yet there I stood, alone on the sidewalk, while Dorothy wound her way down the block in the opposite direction.

Clearly, something was wrong with her. The question was, what? I glanced back over my shoulder in the direction of the office, felt guilty about ditching work for somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.128 seconds, and followed her. For Relena's sake, I told myself. After all, Dorothy was her friend, and if she'd seen her acting strangely, she'd want to know why.

I don't know if she sensed I was behind her or not, but she was practically running to wherever she was going, cutting through the crowded streets like a barracuda through water. She held her head as high as ever, but never once looked anyone in the eye. I got the feeling I was the only person she'd actually acknowledged all day. For a moment I thought maybe I should take that as a compliment of sorts and get my ass back to work. I didn't.

We'd gone about six blocks before she crossed the street and ducked into a squat, nondescript building. For whatever reason, there were four people milling around outside with signs, and as she approached they pushed themselves into her path, waving their signs and shouting at her. Her nose went even higher as she, rather politely, I thought, considering how rude they were being to her - ignored them. It wasn't until the door closed firmly behind her that I saw the sign above it.

Family Planning Clinic, it said.

Duo teases me sometimes about being clueless to the mundane realities of the world. In all fairness, I do have my moments, and this was one of them. I stood on the sidewalk staring at that sign for the longest time, trying to figure out what possible reason she would have had for going in there. I'd overheard her say to Relena once that she had no intention of ever getting married, and that children were out of the question.

"You're just saying that," Relena had scoffed.

"Relena," she'd replied quietly, "Some of us just aren't meant to be mothers."

_Some of us just aren't meant to be mothers._

The next thing I knew, I was sprinting across the street.

The sign wavers jumped in front of me, too, and I was considerably less polite than she'd been. One of them shouted at me - "They're killing babies in there!" - and all I could think was, yeah, so had I. I pushed through the door and went right to the receptionist, a solid woman built like a mother bear and just as friendly.

"Yes?" she said icily. I guess she thought I was with the people outside.

"I'm looking for someone who just came in here - about 5"6', long blonde hair and blue eyes. Her name is - "

She held up a hand like she intended to swat me with it. "We don't give out information about our patients."

"I just want to know if she's here."

"Are you the father?"

That was an unexpected punch in the gut. I paused and replied "No."

"Then it's none of your business if she's here or not."

"Wait," I said as she turned her back on me. "I'm a friend of hers. I mean, kind of. She's really more the friend of a friend, but I know her and I saw her walking over here and she looked..."

She turned back to me again, appraising my worth. "She looked...?"

"She looked...sad," I replied with a shrug that felt useless. "She never looks sad."

We stood there staring at each other for a couple of long seconds before she jerked a thumb toward a door on the other side of the room. "Patients exit through there. She'll be out in about an hour. You're welcome to wait for her outside."

I nodded my thanks and moved to the door, and when I had my hand on the knob she asked me to stop.

"Don't lecture her," she said. "She's beaten herself up enough. She doesn't need to take a bunch of nonsense off a so-called 'friend of a friend'."

"I won't," I promised.

"She'll be weak, and a little dehydrated from the anesthetic. You'll have to take her home - she can't drive herself. No solid food for at least six hours, then only mild things for another twenty-four. Got it?"

"Got it." And with that, I went outside.

\--

I called Duo while I was waiting and told him I'd be home late. When he asked why, I said something had come up and that I'd tell him about it later. To his credit, he didn't push. That's one of the nice things about living with him and Wufei - they know better than to push.

When she finally came out, she was walking a little shakily, and I think that startled me more than anything else. She didn't notice me holding up the wall as she passed by, so I stepped out and put a hand on her shoulder. She stiffened when I said her name, and when she looked at me her eyes were red and angry.

"What do you want?" she hissed.

"Nothing," I replied. "I'm taking you home."

"I don't need your help."

"Too bad, because you're getting it. Don't make me carry you."

She started to snarl, but it turned into an angry huff. "You would, too, just to be spiteful. Fine, you can walk me to my car, but please don't ask me any questions. I'd like to retain the scrap of dignity I have left, thank you."

I took her arm and she leaned into me more than she ever had before. "I'm driving you home," I said.

"That's not necessary," she replied, her voice dull and flat.

I snorted. "You can barely walk."

"I'm fine," she insisted.

"Dorothy, you're going to let me help you, if for no other reason than to save me from explaining to Relena what exactly I was thinking when I let you drive home in this condition."

"Relena's not going to find out I was in this condition," she said. She was trying to sound insistent, but it came across more as pleading.

"She will if you wrap your car around a street lamp because you were too stoned on painkillers to drive."

She laughed a little - a bitter, brittle sound. "I never thought I'd hear you use the word 'stoned'. Fine, drive me home, then. Live up to your reputation as the errant knight and then leave me in peace."

I had no reply, so I didn't make one. We got to her car - she had parked almost eight blocks away - and she begrudgingly handed me the keys. I helped her get settled in, closed the door for her, and crossed over to the driver's seat. When I climbed in, she was laughing sleepily.

"What?" I asked.

"You held the door open for me. You really are an errant knight."

She fell asleep before I pulled away from the curb.

\--

It took longer than anticipated to get her home. I drove to the building I remembered as hers, woke her up, and asked her where I should park. She looked out the window and replied, gesturing vaguely to her left, "About four blocks that way. I lived in this building three apartments ago."

"Oh," I said. "I guess it's been a while since I've been to your place."

"Yes," she nodded, "I suppose it has."

I got to the right place, into the elevator and to her door before she tried to get rid of me again. "I'll be fine now," she began. "Thank you for your time, Heero, I appreciate - "

"I'm staying," I interrupted.

She blinked, her hand still on the doorknob, not turning it. "That's not necessary."

For the first time in my life, I think, I looked her right in the eye. She was scared. I could tell, and I wondered at it. The Dorothy I thought I knew wasn't scared of anything, and yet...

"I think it is," I said firmly.

She stared at me for a long moment before she acquiesced. "Suit yourself," she replied, not giving up anything.

She walked in trying to keep up appearances, toeing off her shoes near the door and dropping her keys onto a sleek little table nearby. She didn't stagger until she turned around too quickly, and seemed surprised when I caught her arm and kept her on her feet. She stiffened, righted herself, and straightened her blouse before pulling her arm weakly from my grasp. "You'll pardon me if I don't offer you a drink, Heero, but frankly all I want to do is sit down."

"I don't need anything."

She looked at me with hard, uneasy eyes as she lowered herself onto the couch. "No," she murmured, her voice emotionless. "No, I suppose you don't."

I watched her lay down, arranging herself in sharp, jerky movements, stretching her legs out as if her whole body hurt. Her arms wound around her middle and she grimaced, lightly closing her eyes. Without a word, I went to her kitchen and opened her refrigerator. The thing was made inside and out of a bright stainless steel, shiny and new-looking, as if no one ever stored actual food in it. There wasn't much inside to alter that perception. In fact, the whole kitchen looked as if it had just been unwrapped. I found a bottle of club soda, and a few minutes later, a glass to go with it. When I came back into the living room, she was curled up on one side, her knees drawn up and her face ashen.

"Drink this," I commanded.

She opened her eyes, passed a hand over her face, and took the glass. "Thank you," she said, sitting up a little to sip from it.

I pulled a couple of pillows from an overstuffed chair opposite her and tucked one under her head. The other one I simply handed to her, and she clenched it against her stomach with a small sigh.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

"A little," she replied warily.

"Where's your bathroom? I'll get you some aspirin."

She shook her head. "The doctor said not for another four hours."

"Oh," I nodded. I felt helpless, and a little stupid. I was starting to wonder if I should just go, like she seemed to want me to, but the better part of me said that would be a mistake. I sat down in the chair and clasped my hands in front of me, studying her. "Do you feel sick?"

She shook her head. "Not as sick as I felt this morning."

We sat there for a moment, the bulk of her words pulling me to the floor and leaving me there. "I don't understand how this happened," I said finally.

Her snort of laughter was hollow - dark and horrid. "One would hardly think so from our little circle of friends, but there are actually men in the world who prefer to fuck women."

"That's not what I meant." She was baiting me, I knew she was, and God damn it if it wasn't working. I stood up and felt myself prowl across the living room. "I mean, how could you - "

"How could I be so stupid?" she sneered.

I stopped and turned to face her, to meet her eyes, and I caught a glimpse of what was going on in her head. She was raw - stripped to her bones from God only knew how many hours of tearing herself down. The tears she refused to cry weighed her down, making her slump in on herself like a woman three times her age.

"Believe it or not," she said, her voice an icy knife of control, "Even I like to feel loved once in a while." I opened my mouth to respond and she waved me away. "I know, I know - picking up a stranger in a bar and screwing his brains out in the back seat of his car because you don't want him sullying the sanctuary of your home isn't love, but frankly Heero, real love comes to dear to a woman like me. I simply haven't the means for it."

I knelt down and sat on my haunches in front of her and finally got her to look me in the eye. "If I could find love, Dorothy, surely you can, too."

Another one of those awful, half-dead chuckles came out of her mouth. "What color is the sky in your little world, Heero? It must be terribly pretty there."

"I'm not joking with you," I said, as sincerely as I could.

"Nor am I with you," she replied. She looked away from me for a moment, her head dipping slightly. Then she raised her chin again, stubbornly refusing to meet my gaze. "Besides," she began, weakly flipping a stray hair from her face, "With you around, Heero, there are hardly any eligible men left."

I sat back on the floor, leaned up against her coffee table and let the comment go. She was baiting me again, but this time I resolved not to take it. I stared at the pattern on her area rug - black and white, geometric shapes, with the occasional shot of red. She sipped delicately on her club soda, as if it hurt to drink. When I finally got the courage to speak again, I had to keep my eyes on the rug, tracing the lines as they turned into rectangles. "We could have helped you, you know. You didn't have to -"

"Shut up," she snarled. I blinked, and she struggled to sit up. "Shut up! It's easy to say that now, isn't it, Heero? But what if I had come to you? What if I had just appeared on your doorstep, knocked up and alone? Do you really think you'd have taken me in? Do you really think the three of you would have thrown away your peaceful little life together to care for that shrew Dorothy and her bastard spawn? God!" She put the glass down on the table with a trembling hand, trying to make the movement more forceful than it was. "You really do live in a pretty fantasy world, don't you? At least Relena grew out of hers!"

I could only stare at her while she yelled, and put a hand on her arm when she tried to get up. "We might have," I said quietly.

She jerked her arm away and sat back down, burying her face in her hands. "It doesn't matter now, anyway," she breathed. "It doesn't matter now. It's better this way."

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She looked up at me, something wrenching in her eyes. "Of course I'm sure," she whispered. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life." She swallowed quickly, like she was trying to make herself believe her words. "Besides, I'm not suited for motherhood."

I shrugged a little. "You could be," I began.

"Oh please, Heero," she chuckled dryly. "Would you want me as your mother?"

I didn't know what to say to that, and it took me too long to think of something. She forced herself onto her feet, and looked down at me with a sorrowful smile. "I thought not," she said.

She picked up the glass and moved slowly toward the back of the apartment, where one would assume the bedrooms were. I tried to get her to stop, but she had shut me off. I was musing angrily on how easily I had been dismissed when I heard the crash of glass breaking from the hallway she'd vanished down. I sprinted toward the sound and found her sitting on the side of a large bed, the glass of club soda shattered at her feet. I moved to pick up the pieces, and as I knelt down, she said "I'm sorry. I didn't - I don't know what happened."

"It's alright," I replied, trying to sound soothing.

She shook her head a little. "I was trying to set it down on the table, and I guess I just..."

I put the shards in a trashcan I found under the nightstand. "Don't worry about it - it's just a glass."

"It took me weeks to find a complete set of those," she murmured. "Every store I went to was almost out - they only had two or three left in stock at each one. It quite literally took me weeks...how could I have been so stupid?"

I looked up, and she was shaking. "Dorothy, it's okay. It's just a glass." I tried to take her hand and open her clenched fist. "Did you cut yourself?"

"How could I have been so stupid?" she whispered. "Oh, God - how could I have been so stupid?"

She broke. Literally, broke. She let out the most horrible sound I've ever heard someone make, curling into herself and rolling away to lay on the bed with her back to me. She kept saying something, over and over, but I couldn't understand it from the force of her sobs. I stayed where I was, kneeling by the side of the bed, my mind frantic. I don't know what to do with crying girls - they mystify me. Usually if I'm in an interpersonal situation and I don't know what to do, I try to model my behavior on Duo's, but he can't deal with a girl crying, either. Quatre - now, he knows how to handle tears, but his technique usually involves hugging the person in question, and I had the feeling that Dorothy really didn't want me to do that. Trowa can make Cathy stop crying and start laughing just by whispering something in her ear, but I had no idea what it was, and the only time I'd ever seen Wufei comfort a woman crying was at a crime scene.

I swallowed hard and decided to try Wufei's method. I stood up, brushed off my knees in case any glass splinters were caught there, and sat down on the bed next to her. Tentatively, I reached out and laid my hand against the back of her head. "It's alright," I whispered, and began stroking her hair.

She sobbed a little harder, and for a second I thought I was doing it wrong. Then she took her hands away from her face and started talking without looking at me. "I don't even remember his last name. I know he told me, but for the life of me I can't remember it. How could I have been so stupid, Heero? How?"

"Shh," I replied. "It's okay."

"Do you want to know what kind of person I am, Heero? Do you want to know how terrible and selfish I am? As soon as I found out - as soon as the words left the doctor's mouth, I asked for an abortion. I wanted it right then and there, but he made me wait. He said I should think about it. God, what do you suppose he imagined I'd been thinking about since I realized I was late?" She took a deep breath before she continued. "I came home that very night and got drunk - drunker than I've ever been, and do you know why? I hoped that if I got drunk enough, I'd fall down the stairs, and then I could have a tragic miscarriage instead of a scandalous abortion. What kind of person does that make me, Heero?"

I didn't say anything. I don't think she really wanted me to. I just kept stroking her hair, wondering at how fine it was. Duo's is thick and soft, and Wufei's is smooth and a little coarse, like mine, but hers was as fine as spider's silk. I'd never touched anything quite like it.

"You know, I actually did consider coming to one of you for help," she hiccupped. "I mean, I wouldn't have expected any of you to make an honest woman out of me or any such nonsense, but I thought that, if it needed one, it could at least find a father figure in one of you."

I closed my eyes for a second, and then asked, "Why didn't you?"

She shook her head, still refusing to look at me. "I got myself into this mess. I needed to get myself out of it."

"Dorothy," I began.

"Don't do that," she said. "Don't tell me how I can always come to you if I need to. Don't pledge your lifelong friendship to me. We both know it's more complicated than that."

"Maybe it is," I nodded, "But I don't know why it has to be."

She sighed a little and shifted so her back was no longer to me, although she still wouldn't look at me. "Because I'm a difficult woman, Heero. If I weren't a difficult woman, what would I be?" She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and said in a small voice "I'm tired, Heero. I want to sleep."

"Alright," I replied, starting to get up from the bed.

"Wait," she said tremulously. "Stay for a little while, will you? I'm rather enjoying your company today."

"Alright," I repeated, settling back a bit uneasily.

She curled away from me again, and I reached over and resumed stroking her hair. She was asleep before long, but I stayed anyway, thinking while she slept. I thought about what she'd said about us giving up our lives to help her. Would we have? I wasn't sure. Of course, we'd have been supportive of the child, had she asked us to be, but I also knew that I'd never have let her hear the end of it. The circumstances of the child's birth would have come up every time we disagreed, and judging by the history between Dorothy and I, that would have been often. I found myself asking the same question she'd just posed herself - what kind of person does that make me?

When she woke up some six hours later, I didn't have an answer. I brought her another glass of club soda and some oatmeal, since that was the only bland food she had. She ate a few bites before pushing the bowl away. I set it aside, and she said "Go home, Heero."

"What?"

"It's nearly midnight," she sighed. "Duo and Wufei will be worried about you. You should go."

"I'm not confident that you're able to take care of yourself yet," I insisted.

"I'm fine. I'm going to be sleeping for the rest of the night and probably most of the morning, too. You've stayed as long as anyone could expect you to."

"Dorothy, I..."

She smiled a weak, small smile. "I'm kicking you out, Heero. Go home. Don't make me get the Derringer out of the nightstand."

I made a small, displeased noise in the back of my throat and rose. "I'm calling you first thing in the morning."

"You don't have my phone number," she laughed quietly.

"I'll get it," I replied.

"I'm sure you will." When I got to the door, she called "Heero?"

I turned around, and for the first time ever, I saw her honestly smile. "Thank you," she said.

I nodded. She was kind of pretty when she smiled like that. I felt my lip quirk up, and I had to ask. "Do you really have a Derringer in your nightstand?"

"Of course," she smirked. "A pearl-handled one - a real ladies' pistol. I'd show it to you, but you'd probably laugh it right out of my hand."

I smiled a little and shook my head. "Eight a.m., expect a phone call."

"Yes, sir," she replied with a weak salute. "Oh, and Heero? Please don't mention anything to Relena - I should be the one to tell her about this. She's going to be angry with me as it is. Best not to make it worse by having her find out from someone else, even if that someone else is you."

"She won't be angry with you," I frowned.

"Oh, she will, indeed," she sighed, "As will Quatre and Trowa, most likely."

I shook my head again. "You underestimate your friends, Dorothy."

She paused for a moment, then slid back down into her pillows. "I hope you're right, Heero; I hope you're right. Talk to you in the morning."

I closed the door to her bedroom and locked her apartment as I left. I stood outside her door for a long while before heading for the elevator. I don't remember much about the walk home, except that I took my time. I was thinking, probably too much, about what could have been. It was foolish to dwell on it, but I couldn't help it. I felt inexplicably to blame for what had happened, as if I could have taken it all away somehow. I didn't fault Dorothy for making the decision she did, but that didn't make it any less...unfortunate. Somewhere along the way I saw a police car parked at a street corner. On the back bumper was a sticker that read "Don't Drink And Drive - The Life You Save May Be Your Own".

It had to have been around 3 a.m. when I finally got home. I took off my shoes, put them in the hall closet, and went to the kitchen for a beer. Taking one of Duo's stouts - more liquid bread than beer, really - I drank about a third of it where I stood before going to the living room and settling onto the couch, where I sat with the bottle in my hands, hanging between my knees. I have no idea how long I sat there before a gentle touch on my shoulder brought me back into the world.

"You're home," Wufei said softly in my ear.

"Yeah," I nodded. We sat like that for a long while, neither of us speaking, before I asked, "Do you think we'd make good fathers?"

Wufei blinked a couple of times, then shrugged. "I think we'd do better than the father figures we had did. Why?"

It was my turn to shrug, and I focused my gaze on my beer bottle. "Just curious." I didn't turn my head as he ran his thumb across my cheek, right under my eye, collecting the tear I didn't realize I'd shed.

Without my saying a word, he wrapped an embrace around my shoulders and began to stoke my hair. "It's alright, Heero," he whispered. "It's alright."

I closed my eyes, hung my head, and cried.

*end*


End file.
